1. Field of the Invention
The Invention relates to a semiconductor circuit, more particularly to the transmitting and reading of signals over long distances or heavy load transmission. It is suitable for the driver and sense amplifier or logic circuit etc. of a normal semiconductor memory circuit and can achieve the advantages of high speed and low power transmission.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The development of semiconductor manufacturing processes has lead to decreasing device size. This trend decreases the gate delay of the integrated circuit. On the other hand, more and more devices are integrated in the same chip, for example the system-on-a-chip (SOC). This trend increases the length of the interconnection between devices become longer as the chip becomes larger. This results in longer delay for interconnections. Therefore, how to maintain the characteristic of high-speed transmission in large integrated circuits is an important field of study. Furthermore, the increasing number of transistors and devices in large integrated circuits makes the problem of power consumption a serious issue.
The invention proposes solutions to the problems of the transmission speed and power consumption in integrated circuits. More particularly, it targets the transmission conditions of the transmitter and the receiver of a transmitting structure. The transmitter is the source terminal of logic signals and the receiver is the destination terminal of logic signals. In the following description, the sense amplifier is given as the main example of the receiver. For example, the sense amplifier in the memory integrated circuit is a device used for receiving small signals from bit lines; and the transmitter is the signal driver. There are many patent publications (for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,879,621; 4,843,264; 4,910,713; 5,079,745; 5,253,137; 5,534,800; 5,668,765) and technical documents discussing this technology, so it will not be described in detail here.